I wonder what is the deal with Durangos prematurely wearing out the front tires.

Today, I tried to have discount tire rotate and balance my tires and they said they cannot perform this procedure because of the front tires wearing out (inner wall on driver, and outter wall on passenger) due to mis-alignment (that is their claim). When I bought this used R/T back in 01, it had 21k miles on it and I noticed the tires were not wearing out evenly. Odd for a AWD setup. The front OEM tires were twice as worn as the rears. It also exhibited the same exact type of wear patterns. I had the D re-aligned and then and bought a set of BFGoodrich CompTA's for replacment. Everything was fine and after 3 rotations later, the fronts are now showing the same wear patterns as the original Goodyear tires. I took the D back to the dealer to perform another alignment and asked the techs how bad was the offset. My durango never seemed to be misaligned. At least it does not pull left or right from drifting, braking, or under power. Techs came back stating the alignment offset was very minor.

Now BFGoodrich no longer makes the CompTA's for my D. But they have the Longtrail TA as a replacement. I do not like the tread pattern as it is more like all season treads. Could it be that the CompTA's and the Goodyear GT's was not designed for heavy vehicles such as my AWD D? I seen some tires prematurely wearout when equipped on heavy vehicles for which they were not really designed for?

I saw some other possible brand tires I like to get such as some Yokohama tires as they have even a size wider (285x60x17 vs 275x60x17 OEM) for my Durango. Price wise the Yokohama VR rated tires run $155 a piece and they have uni-directional performance treads. The BFGoodrich Longtrail TA's run $145.

The OEM tires that was on my Durango lasted until 45k. I am now hitting the 72k mark and I estimate that I can problaby have enough outter and inner tread left for up to 85k-90k.

Oh well, if I can make tires last an average of 40k miles or more, I may just settle for the wider yokohama VR rated tires.

 

You might want to look into getting high performance (or better than stock shocks), or atleast have the suspension checked out. After I replaced the front shocks the edge wearing we had on the front tires seems to have dissapeared, I put on Tokico Trekmaster shocks in front and rear. The new shocks also improved the braking some.

 

The OEM shocks were replaced at 50k with Monroe Reflex shocks. Big improvement on the handling response. 3 of the 4 OEM shocks were totally dead. I had my reflexes checked out and it is okay. I am beginning to think it may just be the heavy front end being a AWD vehicle that is just too much for the regular tires to handle on the long run.

 

Michelin LTX M/S 31x10.5x15 is what I have. I put them on after the Goodyears came off bald at 55k miles. After 93,200 miles, I replaced them this month with another set of Michelin LTX M/S. I didn't replace them because they were bald, they weren't! Just that after 93,000+ miles I didn't want to drive 10 hours each way to the All-Chrysler Nationals three weeks ago on tires with that many miles on them in the summer heat. Had I been driving around town and to work, I would have left them on and got over 100K out of them.

Want a great tire for the D, Michelin LTX M/S.

IndyDurango

 

hey I want to get 18inch rims with a off road tire still for it.. do you think I can with my stock lift or do you think I should lower the rim size to a 17 and get a tire to fit that. I mean a lift is coming but not as soon as new rims and tiress? any sugestions? thanks